Many of us have LinkedIn profiles displaying our work histories and employer endorsements, but let’s be honest – many of those profiles lay dormant while the more visually engaging social media networks hold our attention for the largest part of our days.

But LinkedIn is a powerful medium right at our fingertips to connect with like-minded professionals, especially via business or product recommendations. Granted, you have to pour in a little effort to garner attention from the community; but we all know how far a personal recommendation goes in communicating trust and value.

There are a few avenues to explore if you’re thinking about branching your advertising efforts into a purely professional sphere.

LinkedIn Ads

Begin with LinkedIn Ads that let you define your scope by geography, industry, career and decision makers. LinkedIn Ads also let you control how much you spend on your advertising budget. You can pay through either cost per clicks (CPC) or cost per impressions (CPM).

Blog Feed

If you’re looking for your target market to get a better understanding of your products and services at a glance, you may want to embed your blog feed into your LinkedIn profile. WordPress offers an application that streams in your updates – which translates to easy access to build personal, human connections.

Page Upgrades

If you have an existing business profile, consider adding a few upgrades to your company page, which can include a company overview tab, products and services tab, analytics and in case you’re looking to recruit quality talent, a career page where you can feature videos and employee profiles.

You can even expand your presence through custom groups, direct ad campaigns and utilizing events to feed the event planner in you.

Let us know in the comments how you’ve used LinkedIn to boost your online presence!

The latest buzzword on everyone’s lips, social media plans and web design lately is Pinterest. Described on the site as “an online pinboard to organize and share the things you love” this newcomer on the social media scene has garnered a lot of attention for itself. The question is why. What’s so special about this website that has suddenly, even in a beta stage, managed to gain droves of followers?

We still don’t know. But after spending a little time on it, we do have a few ideas to throw around.

Visual Appeal

In the opinion of this writer, Pinterest is reinforcing the fact that we’re moving away from a text-based culture and becoming a visually based culture. The website develops conversations around categorical pictures which can be liked, commented on and re-pinned. The pictures are culled from the content that members link to. Essentially, it is a book-marking site with countless and highly creative pictures making the rounds.

Design

The waterfall of pictures on the landing page notwithstanding, the design of the website is refreshingly simple and uncomplicated, as is the navigation. Expected standard are followed with the About and Login buttons at the top right corner of the page, a “Search” box on the top left and a large Login button at eye level.

Overall, the layout and design are rather minimalistic and not in the reverse-chronology mode that Facebook and Twitter are set up for.

See? Refreshing.

User-Centric

Not that other websites aren’t, but somehow allowing their members to organize their content in the way they see fit without the traditional web-site building blocks in place is giving people more freedom and more hours spent on Pinterest. More traffic, more site-views and many more click-throughs. It’s not a bad set up.

Have you played around with Pinterest lately? Let us know how your experience was!

Sure, the game’s big. Who doesn’t love the final word in a season fraught with partisan fan-fever? But let’s face it – the most watched televised event in the country brings the lure of shiny advertising with it. And that’s what makes people linger during commercial breaks. With 111 million viewers who tuned in for 2011, and a hefty $3.5 million dollar price tag for a 30 second spot, Superbowl advertising is officially at its priciest high.

But how does it all come together? The price tag barely scratches the surface of all the work that gets poured into developing an ad scheduled to run during the Superbowl. For starters, the price is determined by where the ad runs during the game (halftime or not) or whether the marketers have bought a single media spot or purchased a package deal, to name a few.

Ad Creation

The process of creating a Superbowl ad begins, in some cases, right after the game ends. Once a spot for airing has been bought, the process of conceptualization to story writing to shooting and edits is put immediately into place. The word on the street is that Superbowl ads need to be culled together for a final drafting by early to mid Fall.

Some advertisers tend to fall back on the success of their last venture. Volkswagen, for instance, seems to be the favorite of the masses this year because they’ve brought back The Force for 2012. The video has garnered over 10 million views (+2 from this writer!) so far and the game is still 5 days away.

The next step in the process is trying to woo the network slated to host the game. Too strong? We’ll call it “approaching” instead. Honestly though, because of all the hoops and jumps in place leading up to network acceptance (script approval, credit checks and Standards & Practices clearance), “wooing” does seem to be more apropos.

Justifying the Expense

Why do it? Because the Superbowl is still the only televised event that attracts and holds the attention of nearly the entire nation. It’s a great time for marketers to launch a new product with almost guaranteed exposure and viewership. Obviously, the wittier the ad, the more it speaks for the company. It’s difficult to fight with nearly 50 million views of a single ad after almost 111 million people watched it on air.

We think it’s a great investment. What has been your favorite Superbowl ad? Let us know in the comments!